COUNCIL chiefs have welcomed a new report demanding more legal sites for gipsies and travellers in Mid Cheshire.

The Local Government Association called on authorities to take action which it says will reduce illegal encampments and improve relations between settled and travelling communities.

The LGA says there are hundreds of illegal traveller encampments in the UK and that additional legal sites would ensure travelling and settled communities have equal rights and responsibilities.

Cllr Richard Bennett, chairman of the LGA's task group, said: 'Only by providing more authorised sites and implementing new measures can councils deal with the problem of unauthorised encampments. We need to ensure that both communities have - and are seen to have - identical rights and responsibilities.'

Measures outlined in the report include:

* Provision of sufficient suitable sites for the 4,000 caravans currently on unauthorised sites. * Ensuring all gipsies and travellers pay Council Tax as councils have difficulty collecting payments from illegal sites. * Reducing environmental damage by providing waste, sanitation and other services which users would pay for. * Dealing with the minority of problem sites with police powers like Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. * Establishing temporary stopping sites and issuing licences to gipsies and travellers to use them.

Congleton borough deputy mayor Mike Parsons said the removal of responsibility on authorities to provide legal sites means those left are full and many travellers have no option but to use illegal stopping points.

He added: 'We are already looking for ways to alleviate this pressure, and we hope that boroughs across the country use this report as a starting point for similar projects.'

Cheshire County Council's Paul Mc-Greary said: 'The report acknowledges there are no easy solutions, however the current problems will not go away.'

Cheshire police's traveller liaison officer Mark Guilford said: 'At present, we are forced simply to move travellers from one illegal site in the knowledge that they are unlikely to find a legal site on which to stay. We hope this report will alter that situation.'